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flashback

It’s the Easter holidays and I’m covered in kids so have no time for creative writing at the moment! But I love linking up with #Prose4T on a Thursday so I thought, rather than posting a new piece, I would share something that I wrote last June (before I started blogging).

It was my oldest son’s sixth birthday and we had a manic weekend where I tried to do everything I thought a good mother should, and only just held on to my sanity in the process. So I allowed – even encouraged (?!) – him to have some friends over for a birthday tea after school on Friday (his actual birthday) even though I’d had practically no sleep (my youngest was four months old), a screaming headache and an ill, tetchy baby permanently glued to my hip. Of course, the five of them were all besides themselves with excitement and spent the whole time wrestling, screaming and throwing chips at each other.

Then I was up till midnight baking my son’s cake and up repeatedly in the night with the baby. I then had to take all three kids to two other birthday parties the next day, inbetween mad dashes to the shops and frenetic bouts of cleaning in preparation for my son’s party the following day. Then I was up till midnight again decorating the cake (and sending hubby on last minute supermarket runs for everything that I’d forgotton earlier) before obviously being up in the night with the baby again. My son’s party was on Sunday and nearly finished me off. That evening when the kids were finally in bed I collapsed on the sofa and posted this status update on Facebook (and the song is just as unseasonal now as it was then!):

*Sings*

For my son’s sixth birthday

the weekend gave to me:

Twelve bags of shopping,

Eleven loads of washing,

Ten bouts of screaming,

Nine rooms for cleaning,

Eight hours of baking,

Seven night-time wakings,

Six sudden panics,

FIVE BOYS FOR TEA,

Four headaches,

Three children’s parties,

Two exhausted sons

And a bottle of gin for me!

This year is going to be completely different. No aching, waking, screaming or cleaning. And no wrestling. I will glide seraphically through the experience and end the day with the satisfied glow of a super-mum.

I must say I admire your restraint… a bottle of gin in the drinks cabinet that’s fully expected to last until June? I don’t do gin, but a fresh whisky bottle rarely LASTS two months in this house, let alone stands unopened! Perhaps opening the bottle as the party starts, rather than waiting until it’s over, would aid the seraphic gliding? Heaven forfend! What would the neighbours think! (#prose4t)

Hmmm, perhaps I should have said I was ‘stockpiling gin’ in preparation! My middle son’s birthday is in august and having learnt from no 1 sons party I laid out squash for the kids and a variety of alcoholic beverages for the grownups. it was in the garden so who knows what the neighbours thought but the other parents said it was one of their favourite kids parties ever!